


The Cage

by Miya_Morana



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-20
Updated: 2012-07-20
Packaged: 2017-11-10 09:07:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/464593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miya_Morana/pseuds/Miya_Morana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This time around, Lucifer isn't alone in the Cage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cage

**Author's Note:**

> Written for aeon_entwined's birthday in 2011.

He’s back in the Cage. He can’t believe it, can’t believe that Sam, a mere _human_ , managed to drag him back in this awful place, taking Michael with them.

Lucifer’s spent millennia in here. He knows this place like the back of his immaterial hand. Knows how its physical barriers forced his true form to stay folded, how invisible ones kept him from being aware of the outside world. There was no pain, no rain of fire, no torture except that of being completely alone, trapped, cut-off from any other being and from the love his Father put in everything he created.

Except this time he isn’t alone. He’s inside a vessel, for one, folded in a way that feels almost natural, so the barrier that constrained him doesn’t pressure him like it used to. And Sam’s soul, so strong and fierce, is warm against him in a way he never expected could bring him solace.

Michael is here, too. He looks furious as he tries to lash out of his vessel and break the walls imprisoning them only to bounce back into his vessel. After a while he turns to Lucifer, his vessel’s face twisted by hate.

That’s when the fighting starts. Lucifer pours all his frustration and despair into battling with his brother, both in the physical and metaphysical plans. At one point Michael’s anger tears through his vessel, reaches Sam’s soul and tries to claw it out. 

He can feel Sam’s pain ripple through his grace and, in a selfish attempt to make it stop, he pushes Michael off, wraps his grace tight around Sam’s soul. Sam is still hurting, but when Lucifer’s grace pulses against the human’s soul the pain recedes.

Protecting Sam’s soul as best as he can, he attacks Michael’s vessel, looks for the soul in the hope to get to his brother like his brother just got to him through Sam. But Adam wasn’t Michael’s true vessel. Hi bloodline was close enough to allow Michael to take his body and not burn it away, but it wasn’t strong enough to hold on Adam’s soul, protect it from the burn of the archangel’s grace.

Adam’s soul is already a shredded, agonizing thing, and now that Michael is cut from the Host he must feel it, feel the pain ripple through his grace. No wonder his brother is so furious.

Lucifer doesn’t know for how long they fight. Time has never had a specific meaning to angels. It’s something fluid, that can be bent or slowed in a thousand different ways. They’re still at each other’s throat when a bright light reaches them, brings them to their knees. It’s nothing like they’ve ever seen before. _Nothing_ is supposed to be able to penetrate the Cage.

The light swirls around Lucifer’s vessel, then latches onto it and pulls. Lucifer can feel himself being pushed out of Sam, but the boy’s soul is still firmly wrapped in his grace and Lucifer holds on to it. The next thing he knows, Sam’s body has disappeared, but his soul is still burning bright and warm against Lucifer’s grace.

Michael blinks at him.

“Was that…Could that have been…?” Lucifer doesn’t know how to ask. It hadn’t felt like their Father to him, but it’s been such a long time since he last stood in His presence.

“I don’t know,” Michael breathes in his human voice. “If it was, then something’s changed. _He_ ’s changed.”

After that, things get quieter. They mostly just stay there, Michael’s vessel sitting down, his back pressed against the wall, and Lucifer’s grace painfully folded on itself, holding onto Sam’s soul. Sometimes they speak softly. Sometimes they fight. Sometimes Michael takes his frustration out on Sam’s soul despite Lucifer’s efforts to protect it. Sometimes Lucifer lets him.

One time, Michael brushes his grace against Lucifer’s, like they used to do in Heaven, before all of this. His brother’s grace is warm and magnificent, but it leaves a bittersweet-ness in Lucifer. Like a reminder of something past that will never be again. He holds on tighter to the soft glow of Sam’s soul.

When Death suddenly appears, Michael says something about the Cage becoming a tourist attraction for overly powerful beings. Lucifer didn’t know his brother even had a sense of humor, never mind how bad the joke was.

But Death isn’t there on a social call. Ignoring the two archangels, he plunges his hands inside Lucifer’s grace, pushing it off effortlessly, and digs out Sam’s soul. As he rips it from Lucifer’s grasp, the devil roars in anger, lashes out at Death. But the being that used to do his bidding is impervious to his fury.

“That was completely unnecessary,” Death utters when Lucifer calms down.

“Why are you taking him away?” Lucifer asks, his whole grace trembling from rage and loss. He can already feel the cold seeping through him where Sam’s soul kept him warm.

“Because it is the way things should be.”

Death disappears as suddenly as he had appeared, taking with him the only thing that made Lucifer’s imprisonment bearable.

Michael doesn’t move from where he’s sitting as Lucifer throws himself against the walls of the Cage, his wings battering furiously against the barrier keeping them captive.

It takes him a while to calm down enough to notice it. It’s not only the loss of Sam’s soul he’s feeling. A sliver of his grace is missing. It’s very small, insignificant and powerless, but still, it’s missing. It can only mean one thing.

It must have stayed attached to Sam’s soul.

Carefully, Lucifer focuses on the small bit of emptiness in his grace. If he’s very attentive, he thinks he can feel a soft, warm glow seeping through it. Sam’s soul. He can feel an echo of Sam’s soul.

Lucifer settles back in the Cage, his anger gone. Nothing matters anymore but this.

In another dimension, in a crappy motel room, Sam Winchester wakes up as himself for the first time in more than a year. As emotions pour through him, making his head spin, he doesn’t notice the warm space in his mind, where a sliver of grace slowly starts to merge with his soul.


End file.
